High Intensity Beam Production at CEA/Saclay For The IPHI Project

Abstract

International audienceCEA/Saclay is involved in high power proton accelerators for long years. This activity started in the 90's, with the development of the SILHI source which routinely produces tens mA of proton beam. Several industrial difficulties led to a very long IPHI RFQ construction process. The 352 MHz RFQ conditioning is presently in progress. Before the completion of the conditioning in CW mode, tests with pulsed proton beam have been decided. As a consequence, the SILHI source recently produced very short H⁺ beam pulses in order to allow the first IPHI beam acceleration. Such very short pulses, in the range of few hundred microseconds, allowed analyzing the beam loading of the RFQ cavity as well as conditioning the middle energy diagnostic. This article will focus on the source parameters and beam characteristics in the low energy beam line leading to the best RFQ transmission